by Lisa Ward
Now, more than ever, organisations need to focus on their values and behaviours and ensure staff feel empowered to meet the challenge of a global pandemic.
You’ll learn:
• How a collaborative, compassionate culture can help organisations to adapt and innovate
• About the need for space and resources for NHS staff whose mental health has been impacted by COVID-19
• That kindness is crucial when people feel destablised
How do you know if an organisation has good values? Why does it matter if they get the job done?
Having been around the block in my 25 years in a wide range of communications and PR roles, I can tell you good values matter. They matter to the people working in the organisation, but importantly they have a direct impact on the people the organisation does business with and that the NHS cares for.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a lasting impact on how the whole world operates, so in that sense it is a uniting force. It has changed the lives of all of us and for some, forever.
I’ve been saying a lot during the last seven months that if the pandemic has taught me anything, it’s the importance of ensuring that you have put the hard yards into developing a culture that fosters the right response when faced with a crisis. Although we didn’t know this was coming, the strong values and collaborative, compassionate culture in so many organisations has helped the NHS respond. It has helped organisations to adapt, innovate and create new ways of working.
The NHS is still very much dealing with the biggest challenge in its 72 year history and it would be easy for those values and behaviours to be pushed to one side to get the job done. The last seven months have been relentless for those of us not on the frontline so I can only imagine how challenging it really has been for care providers.
Mental health matters
Which brings me onto a key point. We know about the physical impact that COVID-19 has already had on so many people. Many NHS staff have been seriously ill and tragically lost their lives. But what we do not really know yet is the fall out in terms of mental health.
We know that NHS leaders have real fears about the mental health of staff and burnout. There hasn’t been any downtime for the NHS. As soon as the first wave of cases decreased, they were restarting the elective and planned care and other services that had reduced during the peak. Supporting staff whose mental health has been impacted requires them to be in an organisation that has a culture that wraps itself around them and gives them the space and resources to get better.
Strong and consistent leadership has come into question throughout the pandemic and it has been heartening to see so many positive examples of strong, compassionate leadership throughout the trusts that my organisation represents. It is this and those leaders living the right values and behaving in the right way that has helped so many staff to keep going. Critically, it has also meant that staff have been able to ask for help.
Give people permission
Values help to guide leaders when making difficult decisions and responding to difficult situations. It also means that the workforce knows what is expected of them. A values-based culture combined with compassionate leadership gives people permission. It gives permission to try new ways of working, implement new ideas or trial new equipment. If this is ‘the way we do things round here’ when not in crisis, it will mean that the response to the crisis will be done without fear and in the knowledge that the leadership has their back.
Compassionate, values-based organisations also give staff permission and the confidence to raise concerns and speak up about errors and problems.
At NHS Providers we have gathered so many examples of how teams across trusts have adapted and innovated during the pandemic, all with the aim of providing the best possible care for patients. This has been both directly and indirectly. I have heard about redundant sleep apnoea machines being adapted to be used as additional ventilator capacity, a trust manufacturing their own PPE and a cancer alliance carrying out COVID safe robotic cancer surgery. There are also many examples of health and wellbeing support for staff, that have helped those staff to continue looking after patients.
Everyone has found this crisis difficult on some level, but if your core values are strong and you have a support network around you it makes responding to this much easier to embark on. I can only imagine how difficult it has been in organisations without strong leadership, without the bedrock of a solid, values-based culture and where staff do not feel heard, respected, trusted, and cared for.
I have been blessed with a great career that has provided me with so many rewarding, positive experiences and triumphs. But I have also experienced some extreme lows. The difference? How that organisation lived, breathed and implemented their values and how it was led. I can relate to those people who will have found responding to the pandemic unbelievably difficult. But I can also relate to those who know they are cared for and supported by their employer.
Avoid a say do gap
It’s easy to write words on a bit of paper to describe what your organisation stands for. Anyone can do that. We’re all aware of organisations inside and outside of healthcare telling us that they are kind, have integrity, respect each other, are compassionate and so on but it is so much more than that and the pandemic will have exposed this.
There has never been a greater need for organisations to focus on their values and behaviours and to take this opportunity to evaluate if they are the right ones and whether they are empowering the workforce to meet the challenge of a global pandemic.
But most importantly there has never been a greater need to consistently live your values and be kind to each other. In the most uncertain and destabilising period for generations, kindness goes an awfully long way.
Lisa Ward is head of communications at NHS Providers. Prior to joining NHS Providers in November 2018, Lisa spent more than ten years in the NHS heading up communications teams at acute trusts and before that was a chief press officer at the Department of Health.
Twitter: @LisaWardComms